It's still rather amazing that my sixteen year old has 52 college credits and has already completed four semesters of college and been on the honor roll every semester! There are times that his asynchronous development socially/emotionally still shocks me, but I think the gap is narrowing. He'll turn seventeen in a week. For years I've said that he has an eight year spread, that he acts four years younger socially/emotionally and four years older academically (12 y.o. / 20 y.o. right now). But I think the gap is narrowing as I watch him slowly mature... I think that my 17 year old is really closer to a six year spread (14 y.o. / 20 y.o). That might not seem super different, but the feel is definitely changing. My kiddo is growing up. I'm including both his beginning of the year writing sample and the update I just sent to his educational team.
Beginning of the year writing sample:
(Cameron responded to this prompt because the high school needed a beginning of the year writing sample even though he's taking only college courses… um, leave it to my child to incorporate Morgoth, the evilest of evil gods in Lord of the Rings.)😂
- Should mental health days be incorporated into the school year calendar? Explain your reasoning.
Mental health is a very serious concern. It heavily affects how we act, how productive we are, and much more. Despite this, the majority of schools fail to incorporate them. This is especially unforgivable because they assign a wide variety of tasks that are very stressful and damaging of mental health. Schools should have mental health days to alleviate stress, and by extension support mental health.
School's time commitment can be quite stressful. This is partiality because school demands in person attendance for about 6 hours every week day. A former student in a public middle school once said "school starts at 8:30 and ends at 2:30, and I often work 4-6 more hours every day after that. I feel deathly tired and wish they would stop torturing me with their endless workload"(Miner Cameron 9/8/20). Our beleaguered student also proceeded to enter online college courses where he was forced to witness his beloved home become the site of 6-8 daily hours of pain, with weekends no longer being a place of beloved rest and freedom. This college student has been known to say "I am very tired and stressed after this commitment, I hope I enjoy sweet release sometime soon"(Miner Cameron 9/8/20). This time commitment is clearly very stressful.
School's variety of assignments are very stressing. The average student at the intrepid Mr. Miner's middle school had seven different classes, with five of them assigning materials weekly, and giving major projects about once a month. The constant, unending effort of completing spelling tests, math homework, history quizzes, math quizzes, health quizzes, and too much more is the kind of agonizing pain that crushes a child. There were at minimum 7 assignments to complete every week often more. There was also the looming horror of the major projects and exams; assignments that would be very dangerous to fail. This was especially daunting when our valiant Mr. Miner entered college, and was faced by 75% of his grade being evenly divided into three major exams, showing the horror of failure on any exam, and similar percentages being assigned into exams, honing the stress onto a single day. There were often similar numbers attached to english courses that would assign massive papers, worth, when combined with each other, 70% of the grade in their own right. The stress of the potential failure of such a major assignment hung over our hero almost constantly.
School's importance also leads to stress. Our determined adventurer was faced with repeating grades, and severe parental disapproval if he failed to pass his courses. If he missed just one, his family would ritually sacrifice him to Morgoth, a very painful fate indeed. He also held the importance of school to a high standard of his own accord, and would be very unhappy to have such a poor showing. Thus it is highly stressful to run this gauntlet of potential failure so often.
Schools should have mental health days. This is because school has a hefty time commitment, a large amount of very stressing assignments, and an importance that inherently gives it stress. As such, there should be preventative measures to ensure that this stress doesn't lead to a mental breakdown, and by extension getting sacrificed to Morgoth. As a helpful preventative measure, mental heath days should be included for this reason. With this knowledge the viewer can have a good case against the enemies of mental health days.
As I am Cameron Miner, I can cite myself as much as I like without using any citations
Status update for his team:
Hello team,
Cameron is now six weeks into his fifth college semester and things are going great.
He had a bumpy start. He did wind up dropping that Calculus2 course after working incredibly hard to fill in the unexplained gaps. (He managed to get his “review” grade up from 25% to 55%.) We’re still not sure how he had so many gaps when he received an A in Calculus1, but the courses were from different sources and he’ll be working to be more prepared for Calculus2 next semester. (He substituted an accelerated psychology course that’s going great.) He also had a bumpy start with Spanish. Again, his online communication wasn’t taking into account how easy it is to miscommunicate tone in an email. With some parental coaching, he got that sorted out.
He is getting A’s in Spanish, geography, and psychology. He got a D on his first physics test, but he is getting a B in the course and will be evaluating what errors he made when the teacher releases that test (because he had thought he would get an A-/B+ when walking out of it). Overall, after the bumpy start, he has been taking responsibility for doing all his coursework and clarifying questions independently.
Outside of school he has been loving this resource for socializing (Catalyst groups https://brightandquirky.com/catalyst-join/ ) and done a bit of climbing. He still misses live chess games and martial arts.
As usual, please do contact me if you notice an area where he is failing and needs assistance. Thank you so much for all the teaching and nurturing!
Warm regards,
Rachel
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